Bill Ruger
For this, the first issue in Volume 4 of Sunday Gun Day, let’s look at the story of a famous American rimfire rifle.
This story begins with one of the late 20th century’s most prolific gun designers: William Batterman “Bill” Ruger. Bill Ruger was born in 1916 and was a shooter from a very early age. His first success in gun design was in 1938, with the T10/T13E1 light machine gun. This led to a job with the United States Springfield Armory as a designer.
But it was after the war, in his career as a designer of sporting guns, that Bill Ruger really stood out. His first commercial success was the Standard pistol, a .22 rimfire semi-auto with lines (but not action) reminiscent of the German Luger. With his partner Alexander Sturm, Bill went on to start Sturm, Ruger & Company, with an ever-increasing stable of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Alexander Sturm died in 1951, after which Bill Ruger changed the company’s traditional “red eagle” logo to a black eagle in Sturm’s memory.
Bill wasn’t without his controversy. In 1989, Ruger sent a letter to every member of Congress, calling on them to ban all commercial manufacture of detachable magazines with a capacity over 15 rounds. This argument was and is pure corral litter no matter who issued it, and Ruger’s company and his personal reputation took a beating over that letter, even as Ruger was making guns like the Mini-14, which used 30-round magazines.
For this installment, though, we’re here to describe one of Ruger’s most successful designs: The rimfire 10/22 semi-auto rifle.
The Design
On the surface, there’s nothing terribly unusual about the 10/22. It’s not all that different from similar rimfire offerings from the other manufacturers extant in 1964. Like guns from Mossberg, Savage, Marlin, Remington and Winchester, it was a semi-auto carbine, with a detachable magazine and a wood stock. The one thing that set it apart was the magazine, a neat 10-round rotary magazine instead of the more usual sheet-metal box magazine in similar rifles. In fact, it is from that 10-round magazine that the gun derives the name, 10/22.
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Even so, the 10/22 sold well. It was inexpensive but not cheap, selling in 1964 for $54.50, or about $575 in today’s dollars. That was probably above the mean for .22 rimfire rifles at the time, but the 10/23 was well-put together, good-looking, easy to break down for cleaning, reliable, accurate, and well-balanced. All in all, a good offering. In time, a .22 WMR version was offered, but these, dubbed the 10/22 Magnum, didn’t blow up a lot of skirts and ended up being made only from 1998 to 2006. There was also a version in .17 HMR, dubbed the 10/17, and it is only listed in the Ruger catalog in 2004 and 2005.
The gun sold well, but as shooters quickly learned, it was easily and endlessly customizable. The gun has a unique way of fastening the barrel to the receiver; instead of the barrel and receiver being threaded and requiring special tools to take apart, the 10/22’s barrel was attached by the use of a V-block and two machine screws, meaning that one could change barrels simply by loosening the screws, moving the V-block, and pulling the barrel out of the receiver. This was the first step in the production of endless aftermarket accessories for the 10/22, making it even more popular. Add to that the almost instant production by various companies of magazines with capacities of up to 100 rounds, and it became very clear that Bill Ruger had a winner.
That’s the real joy of the 10/22; you can, even after over 60 years in production, still make a 10/22 that’s like no other.The Guns
Bill Ruger passed away in 2002, but his rifle is not only still sold, but it’s sold in greater numbers than ever. You can get one in Standard trim, with a synthetic or a wood stock, and that wood stock version looks pretty much just like the original 10/22 that rolled off the line in 1964. You can get them from the factory with a scope, with a sleeved carbon-fiber barrel, in a standard or a takedown model. There are available heavy-barreled target versions, with laminated wood or synthetic stocks. There’s also a short-barreled rifle (SBR) version, which we can hope will soon be legal to purchase without the NFA nitwittery. In the past, there were such variations as the International version, which had a full-length stock. And the 10/22 was almost certainly part of the inspiration behind the 77/22 bolt gun, which is just what it sounds like: More or less a bolt-action 10/22. I have handled and fired a couple of examples of these, and they handle and shoot as well as their semi-auto counterparts, which is now prompting me to wonder why I don’t have one.
You can even get a left-handed version of the 10/22 from Ruger.
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Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we might also note that the 10/22 design has been copied, time and again. Savage makes the RXR 22, Magnum Research makes the Research Magnum, and Smith & Wesson even made one that was close enough to prompt a lawsuit by Ruger.
Here’s the real fun part: The aftermarket parts market for the 10/22 has exploded to the point where you can assemble a complete rifle with no Ruger parts in it whatsoever.
Today
The 10/22 is still in production today and remains one of the most popular and most customizable rimfire rifles in production.
We have two of these in our safe. Mine has a custom Fajen thumbhole stock, a .920 target barrel, and a 6-24X target scope. My wife’s 10/22 is stock, in stainless steel, with an electronic optical sight. Two different pieces for two different purposes, but they do demonstrate the versatility of this, perhaps Bill Ruger’s greatest design in long arms.My sole piece of advice on these neat little rifles is this: Original Ruger 10-round rotary magazines are, in my experience, far more reliable than aftermarket ones.
Bill Ruger’s tenure at the helm of his successful company wasn’t without its detractors, mostly due to the ill-advised letter to Congress about “high capacity” magazines. But with the 10/22, he had a winner, and even now, we should acknowledge that; the 10/22 has, after all, passed the greatest test of success, namely that after 62 years, American shooters are still buying them. You can’t argue with success, and the 10/22 is one.
Now, if only I could convince them to offer one in a .25 rimfire, like the .25 Savage; make a new one, even, and call it the .25 Ruger Rimfire. I’d stand in line to buy that gun.
